


my fist against bone

by ronsenboobi (snewvilliurs)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Thor (2011), Pre-Thor: The Dark World, Sif-centric, hints of loki having weird feelings for sif in a shitty loki way, literal centuries of baggage, thorsif finally getting somewhere after centuries of mutual pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 08:26:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 20,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14930717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snewvilliurs/pseuds/ronsenboobi
Summary: Sif welcomed him into her arms with an ease that she might have doubted even being capable of; she was coming to understand that it was not to weaken herself to seek his love, but a sort of courage to take what she wanted because it was freely given.In the aftermath of Thor's banishment, Loki's death, and the destruction of Bifröst, Sif is forced to reflect upon much: her past, her purpose, and her relationship with both of Asgard's princes.(Set within the MCU timeline of events started inThorup to the beginning ofThe Dark World, with a generous sprinkling of backstory and general inspiration from various comic runs. Rated M for nonexplicit sexual content and a few brief descriptions of violence.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> if you're looking for some mood music, you can listen to the playlist i had on shuffle the whole time i worked on this [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/ronsenboobi/playlist/5NnCp950t9W7Vb9ijjcvyv?si=eJhq6qZaRPCC_6UqrEsYIA). happy reading!

The very air in Asgard seemed to change after the death of Loki. Though treachery was easily condemned, even if it meant tarnishing the memory of the dead, Thor could not so easily banish what remained of his brother to resentment. It was his hand that felt him slip from its grip; such things worsened the weight of grief, no matter the actions that had led to Loki’s death, and it lingered wherever Thor went. His smile had always kept Asgard bright—his exile had made that clear, and his sorrowful return clearer. He went about his duty at the All-Father’s side with diligence, but his fervor had dulled. Midgard had changed him. Loki’s death was a wound that would be slow to heal.

Over time, the ripples of turmoil that had rocked Asgard since Thor’s failed coronation dissipated, and Asgard set its sights on healing. Loyalties fell back into place as Odin returned to his throne; efforts to have Bifröst rebuilt were set in motion. The warriors longed for the hum of battle once again, but with a measure of peace returned to Asgard and the rest of the Nine Worlds closed to them, they trained more than they fought.

Restlessness opened Sif’s eyes even wider to the suffering to which Thor took in silence. His smiles returned to him in time, when the days of mourning faded into the rest, but she knew him better than any other; his fires yet burned low. Loki and the people he had left behind on Midgard still haunted his thoughts as far as even his most peaceful dreams. He spent much of his time sitting at the jagged edge of the broken Bifröst rather than sparring, as he so often filled his days before when there was no real fight to be had; sometimes with Heimdall at his side, ever watchful, often alone. He was quiet with remembrance and the cost of the sacrifices that kept him there.

Through the whole of Asgard, there were few who heard in the silence and saw in the smiles that were not quite his own how pale Thor had become. Sif could only see that same recognition in Frigga and no one else—perhaps Loki might have, as ill as it sat with her to think it. The queen, however, saw not only through her son but through Sif, as well; she had always seemed to understand her in ways none but Thor ever had. Now more than ever Sif felt naked under Frigga’s gentle gaze, watching as she stood, quiet and loyal, at Thor’s side.

It pained Sif to see the man for whom she so deeply cared like this, but try as she might, she could never find the words to comfort him. Loki had been the one for words—Sif and Thor, they spoke their hearts in battle. Nothing else felt right.

Frigga came to her one evening mere moments after she had returned to her chambers from her bath, knocking gently upon the door before stepping inside. She walked with soft steps, as though afraid to disturb the very air; Sif was quick to rise to her feet and bow her head, her fist against her heart.

“Please, Sif—none of this,” said Frigga, smiling kindly. “I’ve known you since you were just a little girl, pulling at my dress to tell me how crass my sons were. You need not bow tonight; I come to you as a mother, not your queen.”

“Yes, my queen.” Habit would not let Sif address her otherwise.

Frigga walked further into the room and took notice of the hairbrush that lay on the vanity, picking it up with an expression that seemed to ask for permission. Without a word, Sif sat, looking up at her through the mirror as she lightly touched her shoulder and began to brush her hair. More oft than not, Sif would only grab the brush and make quick work of it when she woke in the morning; sitting motionless before a mirror was as strange to her as magic. Still, Frigga’s gestures were so filled with kindness and comfort, and her reflection smiling, Sif found the tension in her shoulders easing. How long had it been since someone had done such a thing for her? She could hardly remember even letting someone touch her hair after it had turned black, except for Thor.

“I remember wishing for a daughter so that I could brush her hair like this, before having children of mine own. You don’t mind, I hope,” Frigga said, their gazes meeting in the mirror as Sif just barely shook her head. Strands of black cascaded through the queen’s fingers, feather-light. “I have not forgotten how much it pained you when Loki’s actions cost you that beautiful hair of yours, but this does suit a young warrior stunningly. I’ve always thought so.”

Sif twisted her fingers in her lap at the mention of Loki, feeling her thumb along old scars and familiar calluses. His was a name all but tabooed in her thoughts; she was still raw with anger and hurt, both recent and heavy with history, and the ease with which Frigga spoke it threw her off her tenuous balance. She said nothing. She had not the words past what condolences she had already given.

Frigga spoke freely: “I know the things my son has done. I have forgotten nothing, the good or the bad—they each reflected, in some way, on my successes and shortcomings as a mother. But I’m sure you understand that my love for my children transcends even death and the pain they have caused each other. To me, this home will never be the same without Loki, as it was without Thor during his banishment, no matter what he has done. Surely Thor feels the same.”

“I believe he does.” Sif looked up in the mirror, finding Frigga’s gaze once again, and managed a small smile. “He has your compassion.”

“You are too kind.” Frigga paused, gently brushing back the hair framing Sif’s face. “Would I be wrong if I told you I suspect that your hatred of Loki is as powerful as your loyalty towards Thor?”

Sif opened her mouth to speak, only to draw in a hesitant breath. She wished to say that she had sworn loyalty to the second prince as much as the first, but to deny the queen’s assumptions would have been a lie. “My queen—”

“I do believe, however, that your affection for both of my sons has always been equal. Only different,” Frigga finished calmly, placing a gentle hand on Sif’s head as she reached forward to set the brush back down in its place. “Thor sits at the edge of Bifröst again this eve. I believe the word from Heimdall is that he wished to be left alone, but I came hoping that you would keep him company. He has been much too alone of late.”

“I’ll go to him,” Sif nodded.

“Thank you, good and valiant Sif. I know you understand my son—perhaps more than even I or his father, sometimes. Do not fear that you cannot bring him comfort because of your own resentment for Loki.”

Sif could say little else to Frigga, but the queen understood, and so bid her good night. As she dressed for riding, she thought with a sting that, had Loki been alive, he would have been the first to go to Thor and offer words of reassurance. It left a sour taste in her mouth; all this closeness, all these years together, and for what? Sif could hardly forget the sight of the Destroyer walking away from Thor’s lifeless body; she would have given her life to defend him from Loki then. Could jealousy truly turn a brother to such hatred?

Bitter as she was, she could only find herself believing that Loki had been lying through every show of fondness and affection. She would not put it past him.

Sif exhaled through her nose as she left her chambers, pushing the anger from her mind. The ride from the palace helped to calm her and turn her thoughts elsewhere, though never quite at peace. Bifröst was still a difficult sight to see, its jagged edges like shards of glass and broken colour; even more disheartening was that of Thor, with his shoulders low and his gaze distant. He looked more pensive than sorrowful, of late, but never quite himself yet.

Sif did not ask for permission to sit next to him, letting her legs dangle over the edge of the bridge. She said nothing and kept her gaze from Thor, even as he glanced at her. They both chose silence as they watched the unfathomable distance of the stars around them, staring at the same sky yet thinking of different pasts. His memories were surely of Midgard; Sif saw echoes of their childhood, how they were forbidden to cross Bifröst alone lest they lose their balance and fall. She and Thor infringed on those rules more than they obeyed them the moment they were left unsupervised, chasing each other across the streams of rainbow-coloured light under their feet while Loki argued for prudence. There was a bitter irony in that he should have been lost the way he had, of the three of them.

All he’d had to do was let go.

Thor laid a hand on her arm, heavy and solemn and warm. “Sif,” he said quietly, as though he had lost half his voice. “I have been wondering for days on end whether my silence does more harm than good. There is a truth to everything Loki did: why he took the throne, why he tried to destroy Jötunheim… These truths my father has admitted sit ill with me. I do not know whether to speak or stay silent—he was my brother, for better or for worse. I fear damaging his memory.”

“He damaged his own memory,” Sif said, frowning. Thor’s words puzzled her; clumsy and mysterious rather than straightforward, like a riddle that he himself could not solve. “A man who wants to be remembered for good does good. Is there much left that he has not already destroyed for himself?”

“Your words are harsh, my lady. He was as much a friend to you as I.”

“He betrayed you and I both. All of us. I saw what he was on that throne during the Odinsleep. There are few such as he I would consider a friend,” Sif said. Her tone was more gentle than her words. She could not argue, not with Thor; not now.

Thor looked down at his hands, briefly silent before speaking again, as though a dam had broken: “Loki was the son of Laufey. Father took him from the jötunns when he defeated them—he and the Casket both.”

Those words cut Sif’s breath short. She turned her head to look at Thor and saw only conflict; how much shock and confusion had such a revelation caused him, if it shook her so? It left her feeling powerless, betrayed—this time, by her true king, not by his scheming son. Laufey’s son.

“It was all to prove himself, destroying Jötunheim. To show Father and I that he was a son of Asgard. He killed Laufey to save Father’s life. Sif, he—one of the last things he told me was that he only ever wanted to be my equal.”

“You blame yourself,” Sif said, making firm her tone in the wake of her dawning realization. How could she have been so slow to see it? She reached for his hand and held it tightly in both of hers. “No matter how numerous the reasons, don’t. Loki’s actions were none but his.”

Thor said nothing for a time, only looking down at the way her hands held his. “Would that I had been made to choose between he and Jane rather than lose both in one fell swoop.”

“Of course,” Sif whispered. Something of his words sat ill at the bottom of her stomach. “The Fates are cruel.”


	2. Chapter 2

That night, she dreamed of Loki.

Her feet stomped hard against the ground as she marched up the steps to the throne, sending shockwaves through her whole body. They beat in time with the pounding of her heart against her ribs: it raced like a wild beast and chased the anger that flared within her. The climb seemed endless, the stairs a mountain, but nothing could keep her from the summit—not even Fandral and Volstagg and Hogun at her back grabbing her arms and trying to stop her advance. She had shaken them off not far from the ground, but their voices hissed in her ears still, like the writhing snakes that coiled all around her feet.

None could touch her. She was loyal to the throne and to Asgard; she had sworn her shield to the princes, and every step she took was treason, but still she would not bow. When she should kneel, she had begun her ascent. She could not call him king without a snarl. She would not allow him to look down upon her. It was a fantasy, a memory twisted by her rage and resentment and the bitter need for vindication that still gnawed on her—all for one moment.

He had kept Thor from his throne. He had kept Thor from her.

The snakes went quiet and still as she reached the very last step, breathless with rage rather than exhaustion; she looked down upon Loki where he sat, towering over the throne. Her shadow stretched far, darkening the vivid gold all around them. She struck him hard, watched as the pale skin of his face flushed, the anger swirling around her. But he did nothing. He had not a sneer, not a word of disdain for her; he was too steady to even beg. He only stared. It was not enough. The anchor of malice in his eyes dragged her down as her fingers clawed for his neck, and then an icy hand was around her throat, crackling frost spreading across her skin, so cold it seared. Her lungs burned with a flash fire of hatred. Loki’s, her own—it did not matter whose. The dream consumed itself in those flames she could not smother inside herself.

Sif woke up with a jolt and found herself sitting up in her bed, gasping for breath, her hair clinging to her skin with a cold sweat. Her fingers scrambled in the dark for the blade she kept under her pillow; as they closed around the hilt, she shut her eyes and tried to chase away the lingering weight of that shapeless hatred. Her mind found the first thread of bright memory it could reach. As the haze of sleep still clung to her, she could almost feel the warmth of that morning on her face, the wind whipping strands of golden hair into her face as she chased Loki out of the palace and into the gardens.

They were both yelling—her, insults; him, cries for Thor’s help.

“When I catch you, I’m going to beat you so hard your mother is going to feel pain, you dirty little troll!”

“Brother, she’s gone mad!”

He still clutched it in his hand as he ran: the flower crown she’d been working on almost all morning and that he’d plucked from her fingers right as she braided the very last one to close the circle. It had felt so silly at first, like such a waste of time when she could be training, but with every flower she’d been more absorbed into the focus it asked of her—and Loki had stolen it and run off.

“Give it back!”

“No!”

Sif knew she could outrun either of the princes on any given day, and Loki without even really trying. His mind always tired before her stubbornness wore away; today, the candle of her anger burned so slowly she felt she could have run the whole length of Yggdrasill, from root to top, before it wore out. She caught up with him just as Thor turned to look at them, his confusion short-lived—it was an easy picture to understand, with how often Sif and his brother quarrelled. Loki tried to tuck himself behind his brother in hopes for a shield from her wrath, but she soon jumped on his back; he lost his balance and dragged Thor with him, the three of them tumbling over in a heap.

“What is the matter with you two?” Thor demanded. He wriggled to put himself between them, holding both arms out to keep them separated. Sif was brandishing her fist before she had even fully sat up and gotten the hair out of her face.

That Thor should act as arbiter in their little squabbles was no rarity, and he fell into the role almost as easily as he fought. When he sided with Sif, his brother would draw back in defeat and give him the cold shoulder for however long he deemed to fit the crime; and if he should favour Loki, he would be included in the beating. It was hard to be hasty when the stakes were so high.

“Nothing,” Loki said quickly before Sif could speak, rolling away from the threat of her fist and sitting up. “She just started chasing me like a crazy Bilgesnipe!”

“He took my—” Sif began, pointing a finger towards her crown, only to see it crushed and torn in Loki’s lap. “You broke it, you stupid…!”

“You tackled me,” Loki protested.

He drew back even further when Sif made to lunge again, caught by Thor at the waist, and gently picked up the fragile arrangement. Sif could still hear the sound of her rapid breathing in her ears as she watched Loki close his eyes, muttering some spell under his breath. She still remembered the golden glint of magic that had the flowers almost shuddering in his hands, slowly mending and shifting until they were a glimmering circlet.

“I only wanted to make it pretty, like this. And it’s enchanted, see, so it’ll fit you always,” he said gently. Sif went still, and Thor let go of her. It was a peace offering, however hesitant the look on his face, as though he half expected her to strike him still.

She knocked the circlet out of his hands and did not spare it a second glance, even as Loki’s gaze followed to watch it lay in the dirt. “I don’t want anything that has to do with your stupid magic. You stole it!”

“Sif—” Thor began, standing up to pacify her as she shot to her feet, but gave up when she stomped away to seethe on her own.

Her fingers had loosed around the hilt of the dagger as she lost herself in the memory. Now it fell away from her, fading into the hazy realm of childhood alongside the rest, and she was left with a strange new sort of remorse, alone in the dark. She had always cradled the rage she felt because it seemed to make her stronger, uncaring of what the whirlwind touched in its path; that day, she had given everything to the anger, but what lingered was the crestfallen look on Loki’s face. Perhaps some part of her had caught the vulnerability of the expression; perhaps her mind was fabricating embellishments to the memory—at any rate, it was clear now she had pushed him away in her stubbornness, and he’d only pushed back.

Things may have been different, had she not made herself hate him. The thought came with a stabbing feeling of foolishness that drove her out of bed as though there was some escaping it, as though she might feel less like sinking once her feet touched the ground. Were these the sort of thoughts to which Thor had fallen prey since Loki’s fall? They were crippling enough to Sif now, in the quiet middle of the night—surely they were worse for him in every possible way, plaguing him even when he should let the days’ dizzying noise carry him.

She entertained the thought of going to him, for the briefest of moments, to finally tell him that she understood his grief and regret—if only a fraction of it—but wakefulness carefully stripped away what vulnerability she entertained. The past was dead and gone; had taken Loki with it. As she wandered away from her chambers and away from the doubts, she let her feet take her towards what remained: a memory, yet untouched by the remorse it could bring, of a golden circlet enchanted from a broken tangle of flowers. Had the magic remained, or had it faded away with the last of Loki’s life?

Sif remembered that little nook he had so cherished in his youth, the hideaway he claimed to be secret where she had often found him with his nose buried in some dusty old spellbook. To her surprise, it was still unchanged: a little alcove in the palace library only accessible from a raised platform, long-collapsed and unrepaired, across from the reading rooms on the second level of the library. A pillar hid it from sight almost entirely, but Sif knew where to look; her eyes recalled as well as her feet the many times she had found herself here at the end of a chase, ready to receive Loki’s surrender when he scrambled up and away from her. Not even Thor knew of its location. She had only climbed up once.

Back then, it had been a recent discovery, and he’d only had a few books—some his own, some borrowed with the intent to return them, others neither—but Sif suspected it had since become a repository for prized belongings Loki wished to keep away from the eyes of Thor or Frigga. Sif had never dared return without his invitation and steal his treasures to get under his skin, though she had entertained the idea more than once, only to tell herself that she would be better than he was. No matter how tempting the taste of revenge, she had learned quite well that some things were to be held sacred even in war—her raven-black locks were reminder enough of that lesson for both she and Loki.

She’d had enough sense for that then, but things had long since changed. He was gone; Sif suspected he’d outgrown the small space and not returned to it in centuries, besides. She tucked herself between a bookshelf and the wall, looked up at the platform, and bent her knees to jump. Her hands found the cold stone edge in a firm grip, and she pushed herself up, crouching like a predator as she slipped inside the alcove. She barely fit; the stacks of books and stone walls forced her to keep her head bowed and shoulders hunched, but still she sat surrounded by the smell of dust and old parchment as Loki once had.

He had been many things, and among them a child, hoarding away knowledge and precious things like a magpie. Sif could almost see that skinny little face of his, with the wide green eyes, as she ran her fingers along the spines of some of his books—then her gaze caught a glint of metal, and the memory was clear as day. She reached between two ancient-looking grimoires and found that golden circlet he had enchanted for her, the metal hard and cool against her hands, as glimmering and polished as though untouched by the centuries. For a moment, she hesitated, then placed it upon her brow. Though it had been made for a girl, it fit her. The magic remained.

Sif touched the tips of her fingers to it. Would Thor remember, if she went and presented it to him? _Take this, my prince, and see that your fallen brother’s memory yet clings to this realm._ Perhaps another woman might have said these words easily, but Sif had always been more capable with words of war, and she tired of putting Loki between them. She removed the circlet but held on to it even as she left the alcove and lowered herself back to the ground again, unable to discard it as she once had. Why would Loki keep such a thing? The only friendship they had ever had was tenuous as best, resentful and venomously hostile at worst. Sif had always thought the animosity to be mutual. Whatever he might have tried to offer for peace, she had always spat on, seeing some insult or expecting some trickery; what was this circlet, if not a reminder of that?

Without even a second thought, she took the circlet back to her chambers and set it down gently beside the brush on her vanity, then slipped back into bed. Sif had spent centuries refusing to compromise on who she was, not for anyone but herself, and she knew that however she acted, she had always done so with reason. But she was not incapable of admitting fault. Perhaps, all this time—before the coronation, before Loki had turned his back on Thor and Asgard and on them all—she had been wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

A ways from the center of the city of Asgard, hidden from the palace grounds by a thick and uninviting forest, lay a pond fed by the humblest of waterfalls inside a clearing. The princes of Asgard, sons of Odin the All-Father, had spent many an afternoon in their youth playing there, sharing this secret glade with the young girl Sif. By the grace of the Fates, it yet remained theirs, even as everything of their world changed—Sif now a warrior, Thor a protector of Midgard kept from his charge with the Bifröst destroyed, and Loki lost to the gates of Hel. So it lived on, quiet and empty, a near-forgotten place of peace among all the chaos that had shaken Asgard to its foundations. Now that the dust settled, Sif found herself returning to that place more than she ever had since their youth had formed into adulthood.

Few things in this world could quell the restlessness inside her that always sought battle: the whisper of a blade slicing through the air when she trained, the haze of mead in the long evenings, the roaring laughter of her friends and companions in times of peace. Thor. This place. On days like those that stretched over Asgard since Thor’s return from exile, Sif found the quiet harder to find—it seemed that the pond’s clear waters mirrored the state of their realm, where ripples on the water belied a memory of roaring currents. The flow of time and the water both continued its course, slowly healing old wounds, blurring the memories of those too far away.

Sif lay on the rocks by the pond’s edge, dusty and dirtied from the sparring grounds, and watched the clear blue blanketing the sky above her. Like black ink slowly spreading under the surface, her loose hair fanned out into the water; like gold her skin drank the warmth of the sun. Moments of contemplation like these brought her a measure of clarity, the same sort that Thor seemed to seek over and over again on the broken edge of the Bifröst, slowly resigning himself to the memory of Midgard, the loss of his brother and the mortal Jane Foster. He was mending, changed but whole, and Sif…

Sif was. As always—for herself, for Asgard, for Thor. That was enough. She refused to allow anything to make her feel otherwise.

To her right, almost behind her, a rustling of movement broke the steady rhythm with which the wind blew through the trees. Sif sat up, water dripping from her hair down the back of her tunic, and reached for the dagger that lay by her hand as the sound turned more distinctly to that of footsteps. She heard his voice before she saw him.

“Awoken from slumber eternal, Yggdrasill cried: but who is this raven-haired beauty sitting upon my branches?” recited Thor as he slowly approached through the clearing. “I could never find in all the Nine Realms a maid of golden hair fairer than the goddess who blesses me this day.”

A fond smile spread over Sif’s lips as she set down the blade again, seizing her hair to wring the water from it. Thor shared that smile, bright with softness.

“You favoured the tale so much there was once a time where you would speak only to recite this passage, over and over.”

“I remember,” Sif said. They did not speak of why she had so sorely needed such words of poetry; Loki’s actions cast a tall enough shadow that it could speak for itself, lingering even now that he had gone.

She moved her dagger to allow Thor to sit by her side, and he pressed a light hand to the small of her back. The long years of fighting at each other’s side had taught them to understand gestures even better than words; she shifted so that he could be behind her. His fingers brushed her bare shoulders and grazed the nape of her neck as he gathered all her hair and began to braid it into a thick, wet plait; her hands idly found the dagger once more. She lay the point of the blade against the pad of her forefinger, dragged it down across her palm, watched how the metal caught sunlight; it never bit, never cut—not without her command. Sometimes it seemed she had better control over her weapons than over herself.

Thor caught a glimpse of the knife over Sif’s shoulder. “You kept it?” he asked, unable to mask his surprise.

Of course he recognized it; how could he not? The dagger, strangely shaped, had once belonged to Loki—it wasn’t long before Thor’s failed coronation that he went to Sif and unceremoniously dropped it into her hand. “Take this,” he’d said, “I mislike the balance. Surely a warrior of your calibre will have no such trouble wielding so fine a blade.”

Even as offhandedly as he had spoken, Loki had not undersold the dagger’s quality, though Sif’s instinct was to expect some underhanded plot to come of it. If it had been part of some scheme of his, he had died before seeing it to completion; the dagger was only a weapon, and a good one at that, with a sturdy hilt and a steady balance. Though Loki preferred short, finely pointed knives, the curved blade of this one reminded Sif of him, in a sense: a strange, slightly twisted thing that could prove a sure and useful ally in its unpredictability. And, in opposition, a fearsome enemy.

Sif could have hardly turned it down, and it came to fit perfectly within the collection of blades she kept on her person. “I kept it,” she said with a small nod, not wanting to disturb Thor’s meticulous work with her hair. “Why do you ask? Did you expect I would have thrown it away?”

“Perhaps. You did always seem to consider him an enemy despite having been allies forever,” Thor said carefully.

“My wariness proved to be far from misplaced, in the end, did it not?” Sif said, more sharply than she intended. She sighed and bowed her head, only slightly so as not to disturb Thor’s meticulous work. “Regardless, ‘tis a fine blade, and a weapon is no more and no less than that—given to me by the prince to whom I had sworn loyalty. As long as he remained true to the good of Asgard, at least.”

“You still speak so seriously of your duty. Sometimes I find myself longing for the days that came before you ever swore your oaths, my lady,” Thor said, not with grief in his voice but a smile. He tied off the braid and ran his hands over her shoulders again, gently, his fingers cool against her sun-soaked skin.

“Am I to understand that you miss having your face thrust into the ground until you were eating dirt, my prince?” Sif asked playfully, shifting and twisting her body so that she could grab Thor’s arm and wrestle him down, keeping his shoulder locked.

He had always been good at laughing in the face of danger; this was no exception. “You dare speak so lowly of the mighty Thor, son of Odin?”

With a snort, Sif thrust her hand down between his shoulder blades and pressed a knee into his back until he was facedown on the rocks. He released a grunt and she lessened the pressure, but did not let go. Not yet. “No, I would never dare. I merely speak of a great warrior, the lady Sif’s exploits.”

“I must—ah!—admit that she is quite powerful,” Thor said with another groan. He reached back to seize her wrist, gave a tug to throw her off balance, and used his weight to turn over onto his back. All it took from there was a pull and she tumbled on top of him, breathless and grinning, a strand of black hair falling over her face. His gaze would not leave hers as he gently tucked it back behind her ear; all of him seemed to soften then, and so did Sif. “Without a warrior and comrade like her at my side, I would be nothing.”

“It is my greatest pride to serve Asgard and her people, and to protect her heir,” answered Sif. Then, her voice quieter, she added: “My dear friend. My prince. And soon, my king.”

Thor nodded. “A king and his warrior queen,” he said, lifting his head to catch her lips in a kiss.


	4. Chapter 4

Memories chased the moments. For a time, when they were younger, Sif had suspected that Loki’s envy of Thor was stoked by her affection towards him—not out of vanity, but clarity. Of all the things to quarrel about, which they always found to be numerous, Thor had been the subject of discord between them more than once, and Loki’s tongue grew more venomous with each new accusation. The worst of those squabbles came about in the very clearing that had been their place of peace and unity for so many years yet, bridging disputes and slights, whether proven or imagined.

Sif and Loki came to find that it was perhaps not the place so much as Thor that kept them civil in those times, when they found themselves alone while he had volunteered to gather firewood. The three of them had stayed out later than they should, until night had fallen and the darkness was all around them, cold and complete but for the reflection of the night sky in the pond’s still waters. Sif had been keeping her eyes to the stars, watching as they beckoned the colours of other worlds to wrap around Asgard. When Loki broke the silence, she was thinking about her distant brother Heimdall, seer of all, and wondering how different her life might have been if her eyes saw the way his did. She could hardly imagine standing still as he did while the world moved all around him; it was the opposite that drove her.

Loki, however, would not have been satisfied to ask for these thoughts, and so he shaped them into what he thought they should be. “Quite the romantic set-up, is it not?”

The words came so casually and in such a gliding way that Sif could only be wary. She knew his tricks well enough: nothing was ever as it seemed, no matter how well-crafted the words to hide the thoughts at the back of his mind. It drove her mad.

“Just what are you implying?” she asked, frowning.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Loki shrugged innocently. “I should only think that you must be wishing I was not here, so that you could be alone with my brother. A private hideaway in the woods, the beautiful sky above your heads—”

“Whatever you’re hinting at, Loki, I pray for your own good that you may stop now,” Sif said through gritted teeth. She was skilled at measuring her words and tone, too, though not for some cleverness or other—implied threats were her talent.

“I see. That would be simpler, wouldn’t it? You and I would both be spared your drivel about how Thor is merely your good and dear friend, no more than I am—you know, the usual excuses. I suppose I can’t help myself; I always hope you’ll come up with something better than that. Some honesty, perhaps.”

“Stop it,” Sif said, shooting to her feet. The familiar anger burned low in her core, spreading through her fingers as she clenched her fists. Standing over him barely made her feel right, in control. “You don’t get to speak to me like this. You don’t get to pretend that Thor is any more than a friend to me—and especially not that you know my feelings.”

All Loki needed was a little smile and a nod, and he wrested the control from her. His feigned show of understanding was little more than that—a show meant for misdirection, masking the real venom that was coming. “Then I suppose you’ll say I was wrong, all this time, to think that you’ve worked so hard to be so close to us princes with the intent of one day taking the throne as queen of Asgard?”

She struck him then, for the first and last time, in a way she never had—it was always some form of play-fighting when they were children, even when it came from a place of anger, pummelling without a real intent to harm. This time, it was different. Her fist came down hard and sharp against his jaw, knuckles catching the corner of his mouth and splitting the skin of his lip. The sight of blood did little else but spur her, and she raised her fist again only to stop at the sound of Thor’s voice calling her name in a way that she hated to hear from his voice: the surprise mingling with a disappointed, protective warning. Her hand shook where it hung in mid-air, still poised to hit; she uncurled her fingers and shoved Loki away before taking a step back.

Thor dropped his armful of kindling and came to them, but neither she nor Loki would look at him. Sif’s defeat was written in blood on his smirk and sounded like a battle horn in Thor’s voice; she had no way of fighting back against Loki’s sharp tongue in a war fought by words, no shield to hold his blows and no sword with which to strike back. Her instincts were a warrior’s and her strength was battle-courage; Loki knew that he could be vicious with his words as much as he dared, because matching her strength to his would only ever mean that he won. The cut on his lip was no punishment—it would heal. But his words would stay. So would Thor’s disappointment.

Loki knew very well that he had won this match.

“Sif,” Thor said, reaching to lay a hand on her shoulder. She withdrew from the touch.

“I never wanted the throne,” she said breathlessly, her anger shifting—to what? What was the whirlwind that took to her? “I would never marry either of you! I only—I only wish to fight, to protect my home.”

She had stormed off then, unable to stay any longer and risk seeing Thor’s reaction, or worse, to have Loki question her words. This was the truth of her heart; there was nothing else she could say or do than that. She wished to be a defender of Asgard and one day, perhaps, a hero in her hallowed halls; she wished for Valhalla at the end of her life. She wished to protect Thor, too, as any sworn shield would. Thor, her friend. Her most challenging sparring partner. Her prince. And even Loki, too, for he was son to Odin and Frigga as much as Thor; though her actions this night disgraced her in that. Sif would come to regret that he may have been the one who needed the most protection—from himself, first and foremost.


	5. Chapter 5

The high, harsh bells of steel against steel grimly sounded the tide of battle. For a moment, the sun beating down on their bodies pierced Fandral’s eyes and blinded him; he missed a hit and heard a cry. Something crunched in Volstagg’s hand from where he stood at his side. Fandral squinted, raised his hand against the sky, and saw blood.

“Odin’s beard, she’s going to kill the poor fellow,” he said as he watched Sif beat an unfortunate volunteer into the dust.

“It’s his pride that won’t let him yield,” remarked Volstagg around a mouthful of apple. “Let him learn his lesson; he’ll be all the stronger for it.”

“Still, I can’t help but—” Fandral began, cutting himself short to wince with Volstagg as Sif delivered a particularly savage blow, his breath hissing through his teeth. “I can’t help but feel sorry for the boy. Hard to recover from something so public. And painful.”

A heavy hand landed on both Fandral and Volstagg’s shoulders from behind them. “So why don’t you do something about it instead of standing there and gawking?” asked Thor in a laughing voice.

“The mighty Thor returns to us!” boomed Volstagg, turning to enthusiastically embrace Thor as Fandral grinned. Sif turned her head at the mention of Thor; her opponent landed an opportunistic blow against her arm, only for her to return it twofold.

“Stay down this time, will you?” she said, pointing her training sword at the boy’s throat as he lay in the dirt.

Fandral laughed. “What, me, do something? And miss the show?” he said, motioning to her.

Thor stepped forward past his friends, his smile wide as Sif’s gaze met his. “Lady Sif, please, cease brutalizing my father’s men.”

“My lord Thor,” said the doomed Einherjar breathlessly, turning onto his side to try and rise. “I am quite all right. I think I may best the lady yet.”

“He has spirit, I’ll give him that,” Sif said lightly, shooting Thor an amused sidelong glance. Grinning, he bent and offered his hand to grip the boy’s forearm and haul him to his feet, even going as far as dusting his cape for him and setting his helm straight upon his head.

“You’ve fought valiantly, my friend. Rest now, and allow me to have at her.”

“Oh, this should be good,” Fandral said from behind him. He and Volstagg both heartily clapped the boy on the back as he hobbled past them.

“My lady,” said Thor with a wide, sweeping bow, “would you allow me this dance?”

“Only if you don’t mind my stepping on your toes,” Sif retorted.

It was a brutal sort of dance, but the steps were as natural as their own heartbeats. They met each other blow for blow; their feet glided away and towards each other like the ebb and flow of waves on the sea; they knew the tune of battle with each other as well as their own breaths. When they laughed, it was with fierceness in their voices. Their dance was hard and long: by the time the sun began to tip from the sky towards the horizon, Fandral and Volstagg had left them, and the training grounds grew silent and empty but for them.

“Do you never tire, Sif?” Thor asked with a bloodied grin as he bent backwards, Sif’s sword barely grazing his chin.

“Not lately,” she answered breathlessly. “I have drunk from the well of berserkers and found clarity beyond compare.”

“What sort of clarity?”

Their swords crossed, locked for in a moment in a contest of strength and resistance; they smirked at each other from behind them, and Sif pivoted to drive her shoulder into Thor’s chest and shove him away.

“I know myself. I know my rage. I know who is deserving of either and both.”

Sif lunged while Thor stood motionless, seeing opportunity in his stillness, only to lose her footing from the force of her lost momentum when he moved away at the last second. He ripped the sword from her hand and shoved his own shoulder into her chest, sending her flat on her back.

“Dare I ask of which I am worthy?” he asked, tilting his head sideways as he looked down at her with a softly smug smile on his face, hand held out to help her rise.

Sif smiled back and made to take his hand, only to sweep her legs under his so that he, too, was on his back beside her. Shaking from exertion, her heart pounding in her ears and her neck flushing with heat, she pushed herself up and straddled him, pinning his arms down at his sides. Then, she lifted a hand and brushed back the strands of golden hair plastered to his face. “You have always been worthy of me.”

She kissed him like a thief stealing some long-hidden treasure. Thor was glad to be stolen; he kissed back eagerly, placing a hand to the side of her neck, his thumb resting against her pulse. Something had sat ill with her after he had kissed her at the pond; his choice of words, perhaps, and the weight of implications there that she had always fought against, but with every day and every smile it had worn away. They were falling back into place at each other’s side, and finally they were allowing themselves to want and to take from each other what they had always wanted to give, always in silence.

There was something triumphant to it all, like coming home after a victory reeling from the rush of battle. Sif could almost taste it on Thor’s tongue as she slipped her own past his lips; she could feel the blood humming in his veins against her skin. His fingers pulled blindly at the straps of her breastplate to work it off of her, sliding under her tunic and against the dip of her spine. Her skin came alive like crackling electricity everywhere he touched, everywhere she touched him—he brought the storm because he was the storm, and finally she remembered, as though she had buried it all these years, that she had always carried the storm with her.

“The armoury,” Thor managed breathlessly against her lips. “Not here.”

Sif sat up so quickly it gave her vertigo, only to realize that it was the loss of him that did. “Right.”

Lightning-quick, she hopped to her feet and bent down to help him up, his grip firm on her forearm; she tugged harder than he expected and found herself grinning like a fool when he stumbled against her. It was a thinly veiled plot to steal another kiss, though there was nothing they would not give willingly—and Thor smiled, too. Sif retrieved her breastplate from the ground, then her training sword, playfully smacking his arse with the flat of the blunted blade.

“Race you there.”

And she bolted off towards the armoury, with Thor’s laughter calling after her. They made a mess of it, pushing and pulling at each other from wall to wall, knocking over shelves and sending training swords and shields clattering to the ground with laughter in their throats and fire in their bellies. Sif held fast to Thor’s shoulders as he lifted her up, his hands firm on her thighs, and tangled her fingers in his hair as he moved inside her. Familiarity wove into the novelty: the words they shared were short and to the point, and the rest, they told in glances and gestures with the same synergy they found on the battlefield.

Only once did Thor speak, whispering almost feverishly into her hair—so quietly Sif thought for a moment that she had imagined it: “It was always you, Sif. It was always you.”

“It was always you,” she repeated in turn, the words escaping through her breath as she shuddered, tightened her grip on him and arched her back. When her feet found the ground again, her legs wobbled weakly, and Thor likened her to a newborn foal as they put the armoury back to rights.

“I can think of seven different ways to murder you with one of these,” Sif said, making a show of studying a training sword before sliding back onto the rack. She could hardly speak without a grin on her face.


	6. Chapter 6

It became a habit for Thor to sneak out of his chambers at night to find Sif’s bed, even on the days where they had already slipped away from some function or training to tear at each other’s clothes. Sif welcomed him into her arms with an ease that she might have doubted even being capable of; she was coming to understand that it was not to weaken herself to seek his love, but a sort of courage to take what she wanted because it was freely given. She needed him as much as he did her, and to accept that was freeing.

In the absence of battle and adventures to wear their bodies into sleep while Bifröst was being rebuilt, these moments of softness and quiet joy were a fair alternative. Better to have Thor smiling at her side and tangled in her bedsheets than sitting at the edge of a broken bridge thinking of a brother, a realm, and a woman lost to him; better for Sif to spend her nights with him than dreaming about the guilt and feeling regret about a long-lost past that her anger fought so hard to restrain. They were both moving forward, their paths crossing so that they could finally walk side by side. It was good.

Sif understood herself. She understood Thor, too, but for where she was concerned; when she tried to gaze upon his heart and find herself, it was as though she were trying to count birds against the sun.

“What changed?” she asked at last, when the question that burned at the back of her mind finally slipped free of her lips. It came so distractedly from her as she brushed her fingers through Thor’s hair that it almost seemed a passing thought.

Thor lifted his head from her chest and propped himself up on an elbow to better look at her. His eyes were the colour of a stormy sky in the low light of her chambers, but there was a rare calm in him, here. A quiet in the tempest.

“I changed,” said Thor simply after allowing himself a moment of reflection. “I was a boy, Sif, a blind boy who couldn't see what was in front of him.”

“And now?”

“It took Midgard for me to see what sort of man I wanted to be. I feel like… I feel as though I have awoken from eons of slumber, and now I see everything more clearly than before.”

“I hope the sort of man you want to be isn't a skáld. I may have to find a way to be banished to Earth myself,” Sif said with a cheeky grin. Thor shared it like a secret.

“Do not jest, my lady.”

Sif’s smile softened as she took a thoughtful pause. “Would I like her? Your mortal.”

Of course the mention of her threw Thor off guard; it was bound to happen, and Sif tired of allowing the unspoken to grow into a ghost. The shade Loki cast over them both was great enough to contend with. Thor’s gaze fell, furtive—Sif was still growing accustomed to seeing doubt on his face—and then he reached for her hand, his lips forming a melancholy smile.

“I think you would. Jane is clever, and she has much spirit, same as you,” he said gently.

“I should like to meet her again—properly—one day,” Sif said with a nod, lifting a brow when Thor cast her an incredulous look. “What? Did you expect some petty jealousy from me? I would do neither myself nor Jane Foster such disrespect.”

Thor chuckled, fond. “Of course not.”

If there was one thing Sif had learned from training alongside Brunnhilda as the only two women in a world of men, it was that there was no strength in such enmity compared to what solidarity could bring. Her old friend and once-lover was better than she; Sif was stronger for having learned with the woman who had come to lead the Valkyrior. She would not forget that lesson, and she was too stubborn to let the love of a man come between her and a woman worthy of her respect, no matter the discomfort that clung to her skin when she thought of Jane Foster.

Perhaps sensing her unease, Thor pressed his lips to a thin scar along the side of her forefinger, so old she had long forgotten how it had come to be. He let go of her hand to thread his fingers through her hair, frowning when they caught a knot. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

Sif had to laugh at that. “Thor. Have you forgotten who I am?”

“Excuse me, my lady of steel, for my dreadfully chivalric impulses,” Thor said playfully, slipping out of bed to cross the room towards the vanity. Sif sat back and enjoyed the view.

“Your braids are a mess.”

Thor threw her an utterly disbelieving look over his shoulder. “Really? My hair is what you’re looking at right now?”

“A good warrior never ignores the full breadth of the battlefield, no matter how captivating the target,” Sif said, brazen with mocking gravity.

Partway through what was sure to be a very clever retort about his looks being likened to a battlefield, Thor stopped himself as he reached for Sif’s hairbrush and saw the circlet, untouched since Sif had recovered it. She had been splendidly skilled at ignoring its presence, so much that she had not even thought to keep it from Thor’s notice. He picked it up gently, running his thumb over the delicate gilded flowers.

“Why is this familiar?” he asked, looking over at her.

“You don’t remember?”

Thor frowned. “Should I? It was not I who gave this to you—of that, I’m certain.”

“Loki,” Sif said, as simply as that; she did not know how to speak of it more clearly. She could not say he had given it to her, because she had refused it; she could not say he had made it for her, because it had come from her own hands. The magic was his, carrying some intent that lingered, unspoken. “It feels familiar because I tackled him for it and you got dragged down with us.”

“The flower crown,” Thor said as the recognition dawned upon his face, nodding. He carried both the circlet and the hairbrush back to bed, sitting cross-legged facing Sif. “I remember.”

Sif shifted her weight to bring her knees up towards her chest and tucked her feet under Thor’s knee, sliding a hand under her pillow to find the hard shape of her knife, like an anchor. She watched Thor mournfully: he held the circlet so delicately, so pensively, as though it were the only thing that remained in the whole universe of his brother’s innocence. Perhaps it was. Sif made to say something, but she had forgotten the words she had wanted to say to him when she found it again.

“You’ve held on to it all these years?” Thor asked softly.

Sif shook her head. “I’d forgotten all about it, to tell it true, but I—I remembered some nights ago. It was still in that little nook of his in the library.”

As she expected, Thor had never been aware of Loki’s old hiding spot; she gave the briefest explanation she could and did not linger. “Of all the people to keep mementos of his—”

“I am not incapable of sentiment,” Sif said, dragging the pad of a finger across the blade of her knife as though testing the sharpness, her hand still under the pillow. “Neither is my resentment lessened by one dagger and a piece of jewelry that I forgot about for years. But I mourn the boy he was, no matter how much we fought, and this is what remains.”

“My words were not an accusation,” said Thor. His voice was deep. “I meant to say that it comforts me that even you honour him, in your own way.”

Sif reached a hand out, and he took it; they sat in silence and contemplation for a time. At last, she said, “You should give it to your mother. She would be proud to see his enchantment after all these years.”

“I think you should keep it. Or at least give it to her yourself.” He shifted closer and lifted the circlet, motioning to her head, barely noticeably. “May I?”

Without a word, Sif bowed her head that Thor may place the circlet upon her brow. The hour was growing late, and these stolen moments of intimacy often went well on into the night; perhaps it was weariness that made it so that she thought she heard, as distantly as an echo, the hissing of snakes whispering in her ears. Her fingers gripped the knife under her pillow harder, but she did not let her body grow tense, and only smiled at Thor. The conflicted, melancholy look of adoration on his face broke her heart; unease stuck to her insides.

She took off the circlet and put it aside. “You’re right. I will give it to Frigga myself.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Are we hiding, Sif?”

“I should think the answer and the reason are both rather obvious,” Sif said, matter-of-fact, barely looking up at Thor from the work of oiling her sword by the edge of the pond. The restlessness was beginning to dig deep into her bones.

Entertaining as these trysts were, full as her heart felt, Asgard itself had little to offer in the ways of battle, and without battle, Sif lacked direction. Thor carried his loss and guilt everywhere he went; even when it softened and quieted around his lover, it radiated from him. With Bifröst gone and Asgard cut off from the rest of Yggdrasill, the very purpose of Asgardian warriors to protect the Nine Realms was lost. Heimdall’s reports made Sif’s fingers itch for the weight of her sword in her hand as the cosmos fell to darkness, piece by piece, and they were all powerless to stop it.

Without battle, the strength of politics grew inside the palace. Though she had a mind for wars that were fought with weapons rather than words, Sif knew that talks of marriage would bind her ever too easily should it be discovered what she and Thor had become. Surely the All-Father would find himself all too pleased with such an opportunity in the wake of Thor’s dalliance with a mortal, to give him a good Asgardian warrior queen who would serve him well after centuries of loyal service to the realm.

The snakes hissed ever louder in Sif’s ears.

“I don't want to hide you,” said Thor.

 _You know what he wants,_ answered the serpents. _A queen to make him forget his mortal._ Sif forced her lips into a smile. “If it is any comfort, you are at least not hiding me from Heimdall. Surely he's seen more than he wishes to many times over.”

Thor grimaced at that. “More than I'd want him to see, certainly.”

“Like that time in your chambers,” Sif said mischievously. She was glad to turn the subject to something light-hearted and devoid of the sort of conflict that could not be solved with arms; Thor made a distressed noise at the back of his throat that was endearingly amusing.

“Do you think he's thought of reporting it to Father?” he asked after a moment, more seriously. Distractions were never long for Thor, not since Loki’s death. His mind worked more than ever.

“I see not why it would be relevant,” Sif said with a shrug. It was a bad lie, but perhaps she was off-handed enough to sell it. “And if it was? Surely my brother knows to measure respect against loyalty. The All-Father may be his king, and he sworn to obey him, but there are some boundaries of intimacy even Heimdall knows not to cross.”

“Perhaps.”

“He is not bound to answer unless Odin asks. In the meanwhile, I am content to give him no reason to.”

Thor thoughtfully ran a hand over his beard. “And if he were to find out?”

“I would make certain he remembers me as a warrior first,” said Sif, holding her sword out parallel to the ground and closing an eye to look along the length of it, “and a woman second—my own woman. And yours, third.”

The doubt that had begun to blanket her mind made her dread to see disappointed resentment on Thor’s face, but all he had for her was a fond smile and a kiss. There were still days where all the weight he carried wore at the edges of any happiness he allowed himself to feel; she saw it now and could not think that this time, perhaps, it was something in her own words that saddened him.

“Of course,” he said. “I would expect no less from you.”

Together they left the clearing and made for the palace, falling into the comfortable banter of two friends as they went; what they said and did as lovers, they always left behind in the places that were theirs and theirs alone. Once they reached the halls of Odin, Thor parted from Sif to return to his father, and she found herself stopping by her chambers. She grew weary of the lingering hold of Loki’s venom on her thoughts, how it still remained despite what healing she assumed she had come to since his death—perhaps the enchantment with which he had imbued that flower crown served a fouler purpose than he had let her believe.

With the circlet in one hand and the other resting on the pommel of her sword as she walked, Sif wove through the palace halls until she was out of doors once again and found Frigga’s garden. The queen was sitting with a great tome open in her lap, and as Sif came closer she saw that it was the same sort of mystical old thing Loki prized. Its runes and symbols were strange—well beyond Sif’s understanding and interests—but Frigga seemed to drink its knowledge as easily as the warrior wielded her sword.

“Sif,” said the queen as she looked up, welcoming her with a smile. “What a wonderful surprise.”

Sif diligently bowed her head and saluted. “I am sorry to intrude upon your leisure, my queen. Might I request but a moment of your time?”

“Of course; come. What do you need?”

“I bring a gift.” Sif sank to a knee before the queen and presented her with the circlet, held carefully in both hands, watching her expression as she spoke. She did not mean to stare; only to measure her reaction, to see whether it caused her joy or anguish. “From your son.”

“My son?” Frigga asked; even surprise seemed dignified and queenly upon her face. How could anyone think Sif capable of succeeding her?

As soon as her fingers touched the metal, the queen’s expression softened; she understood. She took the circlet with one hand, and with the other held Sif’s, so gently it almost made her ache. “Loki.”

“Aye. This is—when we were but children, I once made a crown out of flowers, and he took it from me. I mistook his intent as malicious, and so I chased him and it was damaged in the process. Loki enchanted it; what you hold is the result of his work. Only recently did I rediscover it—I meant for Thor to give it to you, but he insisted it should come from me.”

Frigga studied the circlet for a time, running her thumb over the delicate flowers and the gently curving lines that connected like fine gold thread. The way she wore grief was much the same as Thor’s, ever-present but soft and filled with quiet strength, as though they could simply will it that their sorrow did not darken their memories. She laid a gentle gaze upon Sif, coloured by a fondness that was not only for Loki. “He was gifted with magic, even as a child. You honour me, fair Sif, but I cannot accept this.”

“My queen?”

“My son has given me many gifts over the years,” said Frigga, placing a hand on the open pages of her book, still open on her knees, “this very book being one of them. I am not without his memory; far from it. You, however, I do not expect to have accepted much from him in your time; I would be happier knowing you let yourself cherish what little there is, especially knowing he made it for you.”

How could she cherish the feeling of a hand around her throat? Sif swallowed against the memory of the ice closing around her neck and bowed her head again. “And you honour me, my queen, but I must insist.”

Frigga studied her curiously, then, after a moment, closed her book and set it aside, laying the circlet upon it. She gently touched her fingers to Sif’s cheek. “Please, rise, and sit with me.”

Ignoring her discomfort, Sif did as she was told, though not without first disarming: she untied her scabbard from her belt and placed it in the fresh grass at Frigga’s feet. It was the sort of gesture Sif knew her queen judged unnecessary from her, after so many long years spent at her sons’ side in friendship and loyalty, but the All-Father dearly valued such traditions from his warriors. Frigga, however, would surely find much less insult in Sif adhering to the custom than her husband might if she forewent it.

She sat next to Frigga almost gingerly, back straight and gaze steady. The queen reached for her hand once again; it reminded Sif of her mother, always so quick to kindness.

“Why must you insist?” Frigga asked at last, ever so careful: she wished to understand, not to press her.

“I feel—” Sif began, and already found herself struggling for the proper words. She felt almost as much a stranger to honesty as Loki had been; he was simply better at lying, and she at saying nothing unless it was plain to her. This was so far from it—and yet the words did come, pushing against her frustration. “I feel I was… unworthy of the kindness he extended me in the past. And—please forgive my words—he proved himself in his last days to be unworthy of my keeping a gift from him.”

“I understand. You wish to rid yourself of that which troubles you,” said the queen.

“I do,” Sif nodded. “I thought it more preferable to offer it to someone who would cherish it more than I—more preferable than throwing it into the waters to join the ruins of the Observatory as was my first thought.”

Sif feared she had spoken out of turn; the words came more harshly than she intended, and she knew not how to rectify the statement to make it clearer in Frigga’s eyes what she meant. There was a reasoning behind her first intentions, beyond carelessly chucking it into the water and deciding to be done with it: she had thought—foolishly, perhaps—that if she went to the edge of the bridge where Loki had fallen, the circlet might follow his path over the edge of the world where they sent their dead and find him in Hel.

Perhaps Frigga had caught her meaning; such would not surprise her, knowing her queen’s wisdom. She showed no offence, at the very least, and turned her thoughts to Sif’s heart, yet again, rather than her son’s memory. “I only wonder: will all that ails you in this circlet be gone once it is no longer in your possession?”

“It is my hope that it does,” said Sif. It was a vain hope, and a lie she was telling herself. What could a mere piece of gold do? The dreams preceded her discovery of it. How could she rid herself of Loki’s shadow when it would remain cast over her hair for the rest of her days? How could she let go when he had made her anger righteous for so long, leaving her with nothing to turn it to?

“Then it is my hope as well, dear Sif.” Frigga squeezed her hand and let go. “If not—and I hope you do not mind my interference—perhaps you will find clarity with the seers in the Forbidden Forest. They helped me to much understanding when I was younger.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. And know that I will keep this circlet only as long as you do not want it. If ever you should find yourself reconciled with these memories…”

 _I doubt that,_ thought Sif. She bowed her head and began to rise: “Thank you, my queen. I will take no more of your time.”

“Any time I have to give you, I am always glad to, my daughter.”

Sif’s heart shook, but she was a warrior, and so she saluted her queen and retrieved her sword from the grass before hastily taking her leave. She was lighter on her feet for being rid of the weight of that circlet.


	8. Chapter 8

Sif dreamed of battle at night, in the absence of war with which to fill her days. She dreamed of that ancient power of the berserkers loosing the chains on her rage, giving her might and freedom beyond compare; she felled her foes in a feverish frenzy and felt the warm spray of blood on her skin as blessedly as the rains Thor called from the skies. They fought side by side, back to back: her shield stopping arrows from his throat, Mjölnir singing in her ears as he swung wide and hard.

Her arms never tired.

Her sword was light as air.

The death screams of their foes overcame all the chaos of the battlefield, and Sif greedily drank the life from them. She could cut down any who stood in her way, every last one, run them all down with a single swing of her blade; the rush only grew stronger, and she with it. Her blood thrummed in her ears—the sweetest song she ever heard, the lines of poetry she always came back to.

From the battlefield rose fires where Mjölnir’s lightning ignited the vegetation, leaving in their wake a thick grey smoke that lingered around the bodies and mingled with the gathering fog. Sif did not let it blind her or stop her advance: she marched ahead without fear or restraint. Blades glanced off her shield, and she pushed through, the point of her sword slashing at a throat, then slicing open a belly. She stepped over entrails and waded through an ankle-high stream of blood leading her deeper through the column of smoke and fog. Thor was behind her, breathing heavily, her hasty steps keeping him at a distance.

Long-dead whispers called to her from the blind space ahead, and Sif could almost taste victory on her tongue—until silence fell all around her, crushing her skull from the inside. The violence was brutal in its absence. She hurt, everywhere; every bone in her body, every muscle, every inch of her skin burned. Her vision blurred. The fog overcame the edges of it. She saw nothing, heard nothing. Not even the stench of death would fill her nose.

From within the grey came a shadow, slowly revealing itself, almost leisurely in its confident advance. Her skin prickled with goosebumps, and her breath could barely pass through the tightness of her lungs—it caught in her throat. The shadow became a man, and the man became Loki. One of the golden horns he wore had broken; a lock of raven-black hair curled in over it and across his forehead. His eyes were a dark void.

He stood motionless before her, the shape of him swallowing smoke and fog and shadow; two knives pierced the air and Sif knew they were from him even without seeing his hands. The blade bit into her shoulder, cutting deep—the blood that slowly seeped from the wound and ran down her skin, suddenly bare, was black as night. Sif dropped to a knee. Behind her, Thor fell hard to the ground with a gasp, and when she twisted to look she saw him writhing in pain, the knife buried in his stomach. Her name was on his lips, then Loki’s, and then the two were strung together with urgency and confusion.

Sif dragged herself to him. She was without her armour, without her sword, the control bleeding out of her with every scorching breath. Thor’s face was cold when she touched it, and his eyes looked to her with a desperation that she had never seen on him.

Loki crouched next to her, still silent, always silent. He reached forward and twisted the knife in Thor’s gut, so slowly it seemed almost careful, his eyes never leaving Sif’s face. Her hand shot out even as pain coursed through her shoulder all the way down her arm, her fingers clawing around his throat, and for a moment she fooled herself into believing that the berserker rage would give her the strength to snap his neck.

The cold wrapped around her throat again, harder; too hard, choking the life out of her—his fingers crushed the breath from her lungs. Not quickly enough. Loki ripped the dagger from Thor’s dying form and buried the blade, coated in her lover’s blood, into her gut.

Sif woke up coughing so violently that she thought for a moment to be spitting blood. Her hands scrambled for the knife under her pillow, frantically enough that it almost cut her, and sat up clutching it to her chest. Her breath burned in her body, but it was hers. Thor jerked awake beside her, bleary-eyed but alert as he reached for her.

“Sif?”

“Warrior-dreams,” she said in a desperate attempt to convince herself as much as provide Thor with an explanation. Even the hardiest of Asgardians knew dreams of battles gone wrong and lingering violence; neither of them were strangers to it. Thor understood. He wrapped his arms around her and gently took the knife from her hands, kissing her temple. Sif would not close her eyes. “They were but warrior-dreams.”

“I can take you to the healers if you need it. Father had them separate the worst of it from my dreams after the—”

“I remember. I am fine, my love. Go back to sleep.”

“Only after you,” Thor said. Sif could see the outline of his smile in the dark as he lay back and pulled her down with him, brushing back her hair from her face where her head rested on his chest. He did try to stay awake for her; he shifted, yawned, shifted again, and yawned once more—but at last his breathing slowed and his hand stilled against her hair.

Sif had neither moved nor fallen asleep, unable to shake the disquiet that now seemed sewn into her very bones. Her mind reached for the images she had never asked for, and they came unbidden in flashes, too harsh and too bright—every time she reached for something, anything; some soothing darkness to spread over it that she might find peace in the nothing. She waited until she knew Thor would not even stir to slip away and out of bed, and spent the hours that remained pacing and thinking of everything but the dead.

Her steps took her along the length of Bifröst. It was a longer way to the end now, but still Sif went by foot, allowing herself to simply exist with the stars all around her until she stopped beside Heimdall. He was quiet, unmoving—a statue that would stand so long as Asgard stood, unchanged. There was some comfort in his steady presence at his post.

“Do you never wish to simply sit by a fire to do your watching, now that there’s no gate to keep?” Sif asked, glancing up at his face.

“It is my place,” he answered. So rarely did they speak that Sif somehow always forgot just how deep the rumble of his voice could be between meetings; she almost felt it between her own ribs. “I do leave it from time to time, I assure you, but it is no loss to be where I belong.”

“I can understand that,” said Sif with a nod.

“I thought you might.” Heimdall finally took his gaze from the stars to look sidelong at Sif, meeting her gaze. “But now you are here. Warrior-dreams?”

That drew a smile from her, irony pulling at its edges. “You were watching?”

“I heard you wake; you seemed in pain. I could not so easily ignore my lady sister’s distress.”

“Thankfully enough, dreams can do no harm,” Sif said with finality, intent on not pursuing the subject too much longer.

“Not to the body, no.”

“Coming from the man who never sleeps.”

Sif looked away just as the shadow of a smile passed across Heimdall’s lips; when she glanced back, the smile was gone, but his gaze had not moved from her. The gold of his eyes shone bright against his dark skin, like stars on the deep night sky; Sif thought she could almost see the whole of the cosmos reflected in them. She had thought it strange as a young child, but now she found it comforting, knowing how many times he had watched over their battles and seen them safely home. She knew him more as a warrior than she ever would have as a sister.

“Heimdall, my brother. There is a favour I must ask from you,” she said after a moment’s quiet. He said nothing, and so she continued, “There is somewhere I must go on the morrow—it can wait no longer. Would you turn your gaze from me, and keep this to yourself?”

“Is there treason on your mind?” Heimdall asked, deadpan.

Sif kept serious. “Never. Would I come to you if there was?”

“If you had some clever scheme of misdirection, perhaps, but you were always too straightforward for anything of the sort. My life has been rather free of schemes since Loki’s death.”

“I imagine so,” Sif said. Her skin crawled; she ran a hand over her arm and realized it was covered in goosebumps. “This is something I would rather do with no eyes watching.”

Whether it was a show of some brotherly affection, trust between loyal servants of their king, or something else entirely, Heimdall gave a nod. “You can go with ease, Lady Sif. I ask only that you be safe and true.”

“I will.”

“You need only call for my aid, and I shall hear,” said Heimdall by way of farewell.

Sif gave a bow and turned away, heading back towards the palace. The unease fell from her slowly, giving way to the determination of one who could only hope for her plight to come to an end that she could see on the horizon.


	9. Chapter 9

She left at first light, quiet with unspoken urgency; once she was out of the city, it seemed almost as though she and her horse were the only two beings in the realm, though the forest soon came alive. A breeze whispered against her skin; birdsong surrounded her in distant echoes; and soon, she heard a growing, delicate noise of wood against wood between hoofbeats like a guiding voice.

Somehow, she needed no direction. The sounds guided her through a narrow valley and up into the forest hills, where she came upon an outcropping of rock that seemed like a giants’ staircase. This was as far as she could take her horse, and so she dismounted and began the climb, pushing herself up each rise of stone with purpose. It seemed only a moment, and Sif was barely short of breath, but the light had moved strangely across the sky by the time she came to the top; she dared not look over her shoulder and down at the ground she had left. She needed to go forward.

The seers kept a chime outside their hut, which was thrice as wide as it was high, and its music and the scent of fragrant smoke filled the air. Sif stood as still as the tall trees outside the flap of thick leather they used for a door longer than courage should have let her; her fingers were wrapped around her sword and her boots rooted to the ground. And then a voice pulled at her.

“Come in or leave this place, child.”

Forward. Sif walked inside on steady feet, ducking under the flap and blinking against the darkness inside the hut until her eyes adjusted. Her nose filled with the lingering smoke; heat flushed across her skin from the fire. The two women who sat inside were strangely plain, both with pale hair and pale faces; one had blue eyes that were cold as ice, the other eyebrows and eyelashes that were nearly white. They gave no greeting. It was for the seeker to act, and so Sif untied her sheath from her belt as she did before her queen and laid it against the wall.

“I enter these halls in peace.”

The seers glanced at each other with some unspoken amusement that Sif could only barely identify, but they remained silent.

“I come seeking your wisdom,” she said, free with her uncertainty, “at the recommendation of the queen herself.”

“And have you come to take what she was given, or what you need?” asked the blue-eyed woman. Sif did not know what to answer.

“Come, daughter of Asgard, and share in our fire. Let loose your hair.”

The pale one laid down a fur between herself and her counterpart, and Sif sat, back straight and legs crossed. She looked between them and reached up to untie her hair, combing her fingers through each braid until it all fell in gentle waves over her shoulders. Without her armour, and now with her hair loose like this, she felt bare and exposed; there were only a handful in all the realms she would let see her like this, but surely there was to be a price to what she asked of the seers. If this would be it, she was prepared to pay in full and attempt no bargain.

“Will this truly free you to see what you must?” asked the pale woman once Sif turned to her looking for more instruction. She moved the hair that curled against Sif’s neck over her shoulder so that it tumbled down her back, and her fingers brushed at the skin above her collar. Sif tensed with a shiver.

“We have asked a great deal,” said the seer with the blue eyes from her other side. She reached over and set a shallow stone bowl in Sif’s cupped hands, heavy and cold against her palms. “We are not merchants who ask for a value that is our own. You give your great price.”

“Aye,” Sif said, still unsure.

The bowl in her hands contained only a sprinkling of seeds and brittle dried leaves, long since faded to a greyish green colour; Sif knew too little of herbalism to recognize their nature. As she glanced down, the seer of white seemed to pluck a flame from the fire and dropped it into the bowl, blowing gently at the sparks until there was only smoke rising from its contents. The blue-eyed woman laid a hand over the top of Sif’s head, then traced her fingers down over her brow and closed her eyes, ending in a line over the ridge of her nose. Sif did not recoil, fighting every instinct to reclaim her space. She breathed—the smoke had the familiar foulness of death.

One of the seers spoke; she did not know which, and thought as the voice grew distant that perhaps she heard both as one. “Open your eyes, daughter of the harvests. See the blood that salted your fields with war.”

Sif opened her eyes and beheld the clearing, bathed in the darkness of a sky without stars. The most light lay in the pond’s water, reflecting a forest on fire—but the trees around her did not burn. She could feel echoes; she could see them warp the fabric of the realm around her. And there Loki sat, at the edge of the water, with death rippling around him and the tarnished crown with the broken horn she had seen in her dream upon his brow. Sif reached for the anger, for that familiar thread that had become an anchor, and grasped only air.

Loki held it: golden, too-bright, winding around his fingers as he sat, like the nornir with their loom of fates.

“What will you do, I wonder, without me around?” he asked, almost off-handedly; he had all of Sif’s attention, but he barely deigned to look at her, too interested in the thread. He pulled it taut as a bowstring between his fingers, so much that it whispered a hiss in the air. “All that rage of yours, and no one to take it.”

“You always did find a way to make my anger justified.”

Finally he looked up to give her a knowing smile. “Sif. You and I both know you would find a way even if I did not.”

She refused to let him be right, but she could not find the words to make him wrong. He stood in the face of her silence and gazed over the mirror of flames in the pond before turning to her, wrapping the thread around his forefinger then letting it spring free. Sif’s limbs were as lead, so heavy that she may as well be wading through water.

“Have you begun to see the cracks in my shining, golden brother yet?” he asked, all too pleased with himself as he took one of her hands and held the string between thumb and finger above her palm. “Fill them up with that berserker’s fury for me, will you?”

Sif snatched up the thread before he could place it in her hands. “If you meant for someone to finish what you started when you betrayed him, you should have done better than to end your own life, coward.”

“Have I?” Loki asked, tilting his head and frowning. The question seemed to genuinely puzzle him. He looked younger, like this: his arrogance washed away, replaced by something else she could not name. “Did you mourn?”

“I shed no tears for traitors.”

His smile returned—fond, almost. “Not for me, certainly.”

Restless, Sif wound the thread of anger around her left hand and faced the pond, watching the reflection of the burning forest on the pond’s surface, then the dark and quiet woods around her. When she blinked, she saw a spark, and then she realized that each and every tree was scorched raw; the fire had already passed.

“What happened to this place?” she asked, forgetting the words of spite with which she would have wished to meet Loki. He stood quietly beside her, and for a moment she could almost imagine that they were children again, in those moments of peace between the squabbles—before the grudges and the hurt settled in.

“What it used to be is gone. We each burned it in our own way, all three of us. You and I started burning it a long time ago.”

“Do not speak as though we are alike,” Sif snapped, almost instinctively.

“Will you deny it until your last day?” Loki shot back. “Whether or not it please you, it has always been true. Born in the shadows our brothers; a girl who wished to fight, and a boy who studied magic—we started on the same path.”

Sif scoffed and found herself smiling, though not as bitterly as she thought she might. She found some measure of satisfaction within every shred of revolt his words poured into her heart: for once, he said something so painfully obvious to her that she did not even feel the need to fight back. Perhaps they had started on the same path; a part of her was ready to accept it. But somewhere along the line, he had sunk so low that there was no bringing him back, and she had chosen honour. She walked the right path.

As she made to speak, Loki reached out and picked up a strand of her hair, holding it between two fingers. “We wear the same shade.”

A shard of ice pierced her gut and flooded her body with fire. Of all the battle wounds to carry, of course the one that had never yet closed was the one that she had suffered when she was defenseless. “Is that why you did this to me? Because you knew this would happen?”

“No,” Loki said, drawing back, and suddenly he was the little boy again, with horror on his face and golden hair streaming through his fingers as he realized what he had done. “It was a mistake. I only wanted to make him look at you less—so that you’d see.”

The shudder that washed over her was a wave of violence. At once, the pond could no longer contain the flames within its reflection; they spread over the clearing, taking even the grass in a blaze until they reached the trees to burn them anew.

“Leave my memories,” she commanded, voice low. “Leave my dreams. Leave my thoughts. Leave my life. I want no more of you; you have been dead to me since the day you put a blade to my hair to shame me.”

“Have I?” Loki asked again. He retired into the flames, but Sif still heard an echo of his voice even as he faded away. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Sif. It will be some time yet before I’m truly gone, but I will no longer burden you.”

The fire died in the trees and drenched the clearing in smoke so thick Sif’s eyes watered, so foul nausea burned her throat. She blinked and forced the tears stinging her eyes to stream down her cheeks, finding in the silence that lingered what she had left behind: the seers’ hut, dead and grey and empty but for her. Something visceral tore at her belly, some grief-drenched rage that she could finally make sense of. She did not look for the seers as she left.

She made her way down the giants’ staircase in a daze, as though surprised to see the trees stretching high and green and whole towards the sky. Her fingers reached for an ash, nearly as wide as she was tall; its bark called for the touch of her palm, and she pressed her forehead to the trunk and closed her eyes. Her eyelashes were wet against her cheeks still. The haze clung to her, but somehow, it brought a clarity that inhabited her spirit like a welcome stranger.

She let loose a scream that ripped through her throat, rising from the depths of her: a battle cry.


	10. Chapter 10

“You seem happy, my fair friend,” said Fandral. His gaze had always been unrelentingly bright, but the way the sunlight pierced them gave the green a glint that even Sif found handsome. Perhaps she was in a good mood.

“Knocking you into the dust always makes me happy,” Sif grinned, tossing her hair over her shoulder and leaning her head back. The sun was warm on her face, the wind cool against the sweat-slick skin of her neck. “More so than your compliments. You should keep them for a beautiful woman more patient and less armed than I.”

Fandral knew to take this in jest; his delighted laughter rang through the empty training grounds and filled the morning air.

“The lady Sif bites today.”

“You speak as though my threatening you is a rarity.”

“I would never do you such an insult,” Fandral grinned. “Will you tell me that which makes you smile so? A courtesy for your dear old friend?”

Sif turned her gaze to him and raised an eyebrow. “Why are you so curious? I thought you more interested in your own conquests.”

“So it is a conquest.”

“‘Tis no conquest, Fandral,” she said. There was no conqueror in what she and Thor had.

(“You have me,” she had said as she embraced him, the smell of smoke still clinging to her hair, her sight still so clear. “You have me as the sky has the earth.”

Thor had held her so tightly in turn; he had understood the vow weaved into her words, even though she could not yet be all that he dreamed they could become together. The ground had never felt so steady and equal under their feet.)

Sif was so happy, so free indeed that the truth was nearly on her lips, carried by a smile. She looked at her friend, almost mischievous with the secrecy, and the words almost came—only to be cut short when she heard hasty footsteps and the metallic noise of moving armour.

The windswept Einherjar who all but ran towards them was the one she had bested some time hence. Sif could not recall his name, but she recognized the patchy flush to his cheeks that came with exertion; his hurry made her smile wilt with dread. Beside her, Fandral saw the same, and sat up expectantly.

“The queen requests your presence in the war room most urgently,” he said breathlessly, looking at Sif. There was no time for embarrassment.

She and Fandral both stood.

“The lady Sif only.”

“What?” asked Fandral, puzzled. Sif gave his arm a parting tap and nodded at the Einherjar, wasting no time in picking up her sword and shield from the ground before taking her leave, the young soldier held behind by Fandral’s questioning: ”no, my lord,” Sif heard the boy say, “I was given only these orders, my lord.”

Unease chased at her heels as she took the shortest path back to the palace, nameless as it was; she almost wished Fandral had been summoned with her, for the endless questions with which he surely would have occupied the silence. She came across Hogun inside the halls.

“Were you given summons to the war room?” she asked him from afar, not slowing her steps. Her voice bounced off the walls.

“No,” he said, frowning—grim as ever. “Were you?”

Sif nodded. Already she passed him, and called over her shoulder: “Something must have happened. I will find you when I can.”

The towering golden doors to the war room were shut when she arrived. She slipped inside as quickly as she could, familiar with the secrecy, and found it nearly empty. Only the queen and All-Father stood there: Odin with both hands on the large painted table where he had planned millenia of war, Frigga pacing behind him.

Sif bowed and laid her sword upon the table before her king, looking up to see him gazing upon her with grim surprise.

“Why is she here?”

“I sent for her,” said Frigga. She stopped her pacing to lay a hand upon Odin’s arm, then stepped forward and took both of Sif’s hands in her own. Something about her seemed displaced: her usual calm was shaken, her gentle gaze hardened by some fraught determination. Before she could explain, the doors opened with a quiet rumble, and both her gaze and her touch fell from Sif.

“Mother. Father. I came quickly as I could.” Frigga went to her son as he entered and squeezed his hand before returning to Odin’s side. Thor fell in beside Sif; they traded nods and silent familiarity that they would not yet bare. “My lady.”

“My prince.”

“This is a family matter,” said Odin quietly to his wife before turning his eye to Sif. “I value your sword most highly, my lady, but there is good reason your fellow Warriors Three do not stand here now.”

“Yet no one knows him better than the four now in this room,” Frigga insisted.

“What family matter?” Thor asked. He looked first to his father, then his mother. “What is going on?”

“Loki lives.”

A cold silence spread over the room. Sif could have thought that someone had cut her open from navel to breast and that her guts were spilling over her feet.

“He—that’s—it cannot be. Mother, I felt him slip from my grasp. We watched him fall,” Thor said quietly. “What makes you believe such a thing?”

“A vision revealed him to me. He is far, but he is alive. He spoke to me—for the first time in a year I have heard my son’s voice. Sif, I have heard you say once that you would know him anywhere, in any guise. Do you sense what I have?”

Sif’s voice came low and coarse. “I do not know, my queen.”

“What did he say to you?” Thor asked quietly. It was strange to see him so rigid, so contained; as though all the time that had passed since Loki’s death was a future that had yet come to pass, or perhaps never would. As his grief returned to him, he fought against hope, fearing perhaps that it would only worsen the pain.

“Nothing good, I’m afraid,” Frigga said darkly.

Sif could not return to where she once had been. She would not let Loki drag her back. She looked at Thor and Frigga and saw them in the same state of wounded hope, then glanced at Odin and saw herself, hard and forsaking. There was a reason she loved the man she did: he had a good heart, so much kinder than hers; he made her better. But here, like this, he was worlds away, and her heart was stone—she felt mountingly that the king had been right to question her presence.

Odin traced his fingers upon the table and the glittering copper-toned display took form before them as a map, showing the branches of Yggdrasill and each of the realms it held—so much more distant now than Sif had ever known them. The light of Bifröst was fragmented. “He is on Midgard. Planning something.”

“Does Heimdall know? Has he seen him?” Sif asked, placing her palm down on the table to see a closer view of Midgard. She watched and saw through the particles how Thor’s gaze went adrift in the sight of Earth and all he had loved and lost there.

“You know he has shrouded himself from Heimdall’s sight more than once,” Thor said, now with some agitation to his voice. “I doubt Loki wants to be found. When we fought, he said… I must go to Heimdall at once. Jane may be in danger.”

Sif opened her mouth to speak, but no words came to stop him in time; Thor had already swept away. Quiet fell over the room at once as Odin shook his head and shared a look with his wife.

“This mortal will be the death of him,” said the All-Father curtly.

Restless, Sif began to pace. Her hand came down at her side to touch the pommel of her sword, to feel its anchoring weight against her skin, but it remained on the table, a symbol of fealty to her king. Odin watched her through his own thundering storm, the same sort that veiled her own mind, and at last he spoke.

“You have the look of a woman preparing for war, Lady Sif.”

“Would that I could, All-Father. Were Bifröst intact, I would already have gone to Heimdall and asked him to send me to Midgard,” Sif said, only barely stopping herself from speaking the violent extent of her intentions with Loki for the sake of Frigga.

“And I would have gladly sent you,” said Odin with a sigh.

Sif turned her gaze to Frigga. “You had a glimpse into Loki’s intentions, my queen—do you believe Jane Foster to be in danger?”

“I fear he has his sights set much higher,” she said gravely, glancing to Odin. “He seeks the Space Gem. Should he succeed, many more than Jane Foster alone will be in danger on Midgard.”

The grim silence returned, weaving itself between the three of them as they each looked upon the glittering shape of faraway Earth. Though her steps had stilled before, Sif returned to her pacing, her fingers tracing the length of her sword as she passed it; she ached for battle so painfully that she thought, for a moment, of following Loki’s path through Yggdrasill blindly until she found him. The All-Father watched her—so too was he thinking of every possible way to reach his lost son.

“There may be a way,” he said quietly, his gaze fixed upon her sword. “A very old weapon capable of cleaving through dimensions. The enchantments that made this possible have long since worn away, but perhaps, with enough time, they may yet be restored. I would have you wield it.”

Sif swallowed and bowed her head. “It would be an honour, my king.”

“You will leave for Midgard as soon as the sword is capable of taking you there. Be ready: I want Loki found and brought back to Asgard before he causes damage to these realms that cannot be undone,” said Odin, extinguishing the display of Midgard from the war table with a gesture. “You may go.”

“All-Father,” Sif said with a bow. As she rose, her eyes met Frigga’s, and some part of her wanted to apologize, though she knew not why. “My queen.”

She took her sword from the table and left the room with the promise of war pouring into her bones.


	11. Chapter 11

Sif waited with a patience she did not have. The All-Father was scarce, giving no word of progress on the sword—such was the privilege of a king, to need hold no account towards his warriors. She saw little of Thor as well, and when she did, what they exchanged was needy and tense, perhaps irreconcilably so. It was all for the better, Sif thought: the simplicity of the anger that drove her as she waited kept her mind clear, and she knew that to be too much around Thor would soften her resolve where Loki was concerned. She could feel the anger burning low in him, but ever clouded by bereavement; he yet hoped for his brother to return to them as he used to be, and her love of Thor poured that same grief into her.

It was too great a shield for Loki to have, and Sif was loath to let him benefit from something that came from so deep in her heart. She kept her distance so that she could be ready when the time came for the duty given to her by her king, separating the warrior from the woman best as she could. They were one and the same, but she could try.

Then Thor came to her, as though carried by a storm: dressed for battle and with Mjölnir in hand.

“Heimdall has found him, Sif,” he said, breathless with conflicting hope and fury. He touched her arm and she could feel the electricity crackling from his skin to hers. “I am going to stop Loki and bring him home.”

Sif felt like something was being snapped away from under her—some glory, some vindication that she had been holding on to, far less noble than duty. “How?”

“Father has a way. I dare not speak of it now—I will tell you everything when I return.”

“No need,” said Sif, shaking her head. “I go with you.”

Thor touched her arm, then her face, and smiled—his familiar battle-seeking grin, almost intoxicated with the rush of that promise. “Not this time. Loki is my brother; it is my duty to bring him home. This is another fight I must face alone.”

“Thor—”

“It is too dangerous a path to Midgard without Bifröst; I would rather you stay and watch over my mother for me.”

“Don’t insult me,” Sif said, only partly in jest. Thor smiled and moved his hand to the back of her neck, stroking her skin gently as he kissed her forehead.

“I mean no offence, Sif, truly,” he said, and kissed her freely in the empty hallway where they stood, daring the open display as they never had. “I would take you with me if I could.”

Sif breathed and managed a smile. “Fare thee well, then, my prince. Be safe.”

“And you, my lady. I leave Asgard in your capable hands.”

Thor took her hand in his and bowed his head to press a kiss to her knuckles, slipping away as slowly as he could—only letting go at the very last moment. As he turned, his cape billowed behind him, as red as the fabric wrapped around Sif’s hands. She watched him leave, trying to still the restlessness in her heart.

“Tell your brother to thank his stars it was not I who came for him,” she called after him.

Thor’s laughter bounced off the walls, bright and familiar. “Tell him that yourself; I’d rather not get stabbed today.”

Sif did not turn away until he was gone entirely from her sight, cutting through the unease that lingered in his wake best as she could. Then she found Frigga—whether of her own free will or from some secret impulse, she could not be certain—and sat with her, quietly at first. As Sif began to hear a whisper of weariness through the queen’s silence, something snapped through the air like the crackling of a whip, and her skin prickled.

“He is gone,” said Frigga quietly.

“How?” Sif found herself asking again.

“There are secrets to this universe that the All-Father keeps close to his chest. I am sorry, Sif: the sword’s enchantments proved more difficult to restore than either of us imagined. It will be yours, but I could not mend it in time.” Frigga laid one hand over the other to keep them from shaking, but sat tall as ever, pushing through her exhaustion. Her eyes were worn, but sharp. “The threat of Loki’s actions grew too dire.”

“You need to rest, my queen,” Sif said gently, permitting herself to wrap an arm around the queen’s shoulders. “There is nothing left to us but waiting. Allow me to escort you to your chambers.”

Frigga nodded, but held a hand out as she stood so that Sif would hang back. “I am quite all right, my dear, but I thank you all the same. The years have made you strong: there was once a time where you would have been seeking fight after fight if you were made to wait.”

“I only know when to admit defeat,” Sif said with a tight smile. “The waiting is no easier than it ever was.”

“You have grown, but you remain yourself,” Frigga said as Sif came to stand beside her, and took the arm she offered; no more and no less. “So has Thor. I am glad he has come to see you more clearly.”

“My queen?”

Frigga only gave her a secretive sort of smile and patted her arm. They walked the rest of the way without speaking; what needed to be said already had.

“Do you believe Thor is in danger?” Sif asked as they came to queen’s chambers.

“There is a risk to the path Odin has sent him on,” Frigga said honestly. “But once he reaches Midgard, I want to believe that he is not. Loki may not be himself, but he would not harm his brother. I am certain of it.”

Sif could not find it in itself to share Frigga’s trust, but she said nothing of it, and only bowed her head as they parted ways. From the moment she was alone again, the restlessness settled back in, and so she took a horse as far as the Bifröst reached—it grew more every day—and came to stand beside her brother again.

“You know why I’m here,” she said after they had exchanged greetings.

“I do.”

“Do you see him?”

Heimdall turned his gaze to the stars. “He has found his way to Midgard, and to Loki. The journey has made him weary. His patience grows thin.”

“I almost wish I could see through your eyes,” Sif said, looking into the distance as though there was hope of finding where Midgard lay in Yggdrasill’s branches. She saw only a dizzying cosmos.

“There is a way.”

Heimdall said no more, as though testing her reaction; Sif shook her head.

“It is not for me to see. I think it would only worsen my impatience.”

“A hard fight lies in front of him, and you have your own.”

Sif nodded. “Indeed.”

She remained by Heimdall’s side for much of the night, and for once did not find disquiet in her own silence. The next day, what she sought was much the opposite of her brother’s steady calm: Volstagg and Hildegund welcomed her into their home for a meal that was punctuated with as many stories of battle as could distract her, and ended in she and Volstagg being valiantly defeated by the united faction of his children. By the time she left, she was smiling, warm with mead and almost forgetful—though not enough to keep away from the Bifröst.

“What news from Midgard?” she asked Heimdall, with a knot in her belly that reminded her why she was a warrior: better to be the one upon the battlefield than to stay behind to be useless and anxious.

“The battle draws to an end; Loki has lost. Thor negotiates with their leaders to bring both Loki and the Gem back to Asgard.”

“Their leaders?” Sif asked. “How much damage has Loki wrought?”

“The horrors were many,” was Heimdall’s answer. “It will be for a trial to describe them; not I.”

“Hel’s gates,” breathed Sif. For once, she did not find it in her to be angry; her rage had worn to slumber, and gave way to a disgusted sort of pity. Her regret was not so much for the man who had committed the horrors but the boy she had known, before he hurt her for the pain she had caused him, whether consciously or not.

She wearied of her anger, like bile always lingering at the back of her throat.

“It is only a matter of time before they are home,” Heimdall said, and Sif realized then that he was looking at her.

“They have a way to return?”

He gave a single nod. “The Gem should make the journey back much simpler. You can rest easy now.”

 _I shall rest when I see Loki in fetters,_ thought Sif. Her resentment rose unbidden through her once more—an instinct she had been keeping sharp through the centuries, even when she had not the stomach for it.


	12. Chapter 12

Sif stood alongside the contingent of Einherjar waiting at the edge of Bifröst with the All-Father at the fore, in all the gravity that was to be afforded to the arrest of a prince of Asgard. They had gathered upon Heimdall’s word, with his announcement of Thor’s imminent return; it was not long before the bridge rumbled under their feet and the Space Gem’s energy thundered through the air with a flash of blinding blue light. The soldiers beside Sif seemed to hold their breath at the sight of both princes: of Thor, battle-weary and solemn as he so seldom was, carrying the contained Gem burning brightly as ice—and Loki, chained and bruised and muzzled.

Silenced. Sif could not decide whether to find solace or the unease of hindsight in that; she remembered words she had spoken in anger and then forgotten, among all the barbs she and Loki had traded as what friendship they once had deteriorated over the years. He seemed paler than he used to be, every scrape and smear of blood stark against his skin—but his eyes burned cold. She thought she saw exhaustion in them, and resignation tangled in a desperate sort of anger, but for once she could not see through him, not entirely. All she could be certain of was that sharpness would be on his tongue should they allow him to speak.

Thor’s silence was loudest among all the rest. He would not meet his father’s eyes as he brought Loki forward; it was as though he saw nothing around him but shades. Odin quietly stood eye to eye with his son—surely all he saw now was the son of Laufey—and rendered a judgement in silence, leaving only the formality of sentencing. Sif understood; Loki had already long since condemned himself in her eyes. The All-Father then stepped aside, and spoke to his general.

“Take the prisoner to the throne room where he is to receive his trial.”

 _The prisoner._ Sif loathed the pang of pity that gripped her insides; she remembered the voice of her father, the first time she had come home with bruised knuckles and a split lip: “the girl is not to fight.” From the moment he had spoken of her like this, she had made every day a fight—a girl’s fight, and then a woman’s, until war belonged to her. What sort of vindication would Loki seek now, with his name taken from him so by his own father? She knew better than to think that a man such as he would let desperation force him into helplessness.

Sif remained still as the Einherjar set themselves in motion to begin escorting their prisoner to the palace, and as Loki passed her, their eyes met. She could not keep the contempt from her gaze; his was empty, shapeless. He broke away first.

“You have fought well, my son,” she heard Odin say quietly to Thor, reaching up to put a hand on his shoulder after he presented him with the Gem.

“Thank you, Father,” replied Thor in a strained voice—it was a formality, nothing more. What gratitude could he have at a time like this? Sif only saw loss in his heart from this victory.

The All-Father turned to join the back of the delegation, and Sif fell in at Thor’s side, a few paces behind the rest of them. He said nothing; neither did she. Then, as they came to stand outside the palace, Thor stopped and reached for her, just barely touching her shoulder.

“Thank you, Sif,” he said.

“What for?”

“Being by my side.”

Sif moved a hand to the back of his neck, holding him the way he held those he loved most, and looked him in the eye as she spoke. “Always.”

He laid his hand over hers and closed his eyes, looking as though he were breathing his first moment of peace since he had set foot in Midgard. Later, he would tell her everything he had seen, everything the battle had cost—but for now, it was enough for her to see that he felt he had lost his brother for good.

Sif could not tell which was worse between Thor mourning Loki when he believed him dead, or now that he knew he was alive.

“Is Jane Foster well?” she asked gently.

“She is safe.” Thor gave her a weary smile and turned his head, pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm. “So are you.”

*******

At last, Asgard fell back into place. Loki was sent to the dungeons, to be all but forgotten by most; Odin instructed Heimdall to restore the Bifröst with the Gem before locking it away in the vault; Sif returned to the ways of war. Battle was a home for her to be welcomed back to, a freedom from being locked in Asgard like a prisoner—the Nine Realms reached far and wide, and gave chaos enough for the warriors of Asgard to put back to rights.

She had ached for it all for so long, and now she had it again—and she had Thor. She had him to fight by her side and she had him in her arms, heart to heart. It was enough.

It should have been enough, but her anger remained, lingering as though waiting for something that was yet unfinished. The fires burned hot when her sword was in her hand, as they always had, but now the embers scorched her even in the wake of battle; she found quiet in none but Thor, and the noise would only rage louder once they parted.

Stubbornness kept her from the dungeons: she wanted no more to do with Loki. Everything he had brought back with him to Asgard was venom, poisoning Thor with a grief he was too good a man to suffer, and Sif wanted to be past feeling any hatred towards him for herself. She thought, in the deepest of silences when she was alone with herself, that perhaps it would have been better to watch him hang—to cut the head off the snake and be done with it.

But then she only ached for Thor as she imagined him watching his little brother on the gallows, and wondered if it was his family that had stayed the All-Father’s hand. Or perhaps it had simply been a father’s own love telling the king that the dungeons would be enough.

There was only one place for Sif to go, and so she went in the dark of night while the whole palace slumbered, with a needle and thread tucked into the palm of her sword hand. They felt safer than any knife she could conceal on her person. When she slipped inside Loki’s cell and closed the door behind her, she found him awake, reading one of those large books of his. If not for the fading bruises on his skin, she could have almost imagined him as a boy again, tucked away from the world in his little nook—but she would not let him be that boy; never again.

If he was surprised to see her, he gave no sign of it.

“Are you able to do magic in this place?” Sif asked. “Conceal us from Heimdall. I wish to speak with you alone.”

Loki crossed his fingers on top of the open book in his lap and merely looked at her. Even with his gaze blank, she felt the arrogance rolling off him in waves, and it only aggravated her. In that, nothing had changed.

“They took off that muzzle of yours,” she said after a moment, and found herself wondering if Odin had not found some other way to silence him when he made no sharp comments about her capacity for observation. She crouched in front of him, wrapping the thread around one of her fingers. “Now you choose to be silent?”

Loki waited another moment before speaking, his words more flippant than she had expected. “What more do you wish for me to say? What is it you want to hear? I meant it when I said I would no longer burden you.”

She drew back as though scalded by his words, feeling her heart drop. It had been a vision, no truer than a dream. It had been _hers,_ and now that, too— “What are you saying?”

“I said all there was to say,” said Loki firmly. “I rather thought you had, as well, but it seems I may have been wrong.”

Sif’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the jaw, and he only moved to wrap his fingers around her wrist; her grip dug hard into his skin. With the other, she pressed the point of the needle against his bottom lip. “I will not let you lie to me.”

“I’m not lying, this time,” said Loki through gritted teeth. “You were always too bloody-minded to be manipulated.”

She would not let go; she could only glare at him, trying to find even a single word that would untangle the violence of her anger.

“Go on, do it; you’ve been dreaming about it for years, I know. The only thing short of killing me that will satisfy you. Thor won’t know. Down here, no one will care.”

She almost did.

“You’re trying to goad me so that I’ll lose my nerve,” Sif said, nearly shaking with anger. She could almost feel the needle piercing the skin as she pressed hard, her breath burning through her lungs, and just as she saw the first drop of blood, it struck her: how pointless this all was. All at once, she let go. She and Loki were both breathing hard, and she welcomed the distance, finding it easier the farther she stood from him. “It might have been enough to make me do it for the satisfaction of not giving you what you want. But this is what I want.”

“You always did hate needlework,” Loki said, running his thumb under his lip and looking at the blood it had smeared away.

Sif could have laughed, were it any other time. She would have, before Loki strayed from them for good. Somehow, there was comfort in that.

“I am finished with this,” she said, dropping the thread at his feet. As she made to leave, she paused by the door, keeping it ajar with one hand and pivoting to look at Loki. “I did find the cracks in him, but all I have for them is sorrow, not anger.”

He said nothing, and so she continued, “He doesn’t have the strength not to let you hurt him anymore.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Loki said.

Perhaps he meant it; Sif did not care.


	13. Chapter 13

There had been a moment, mere hours after Thor’s banishment: one moment of honesty.

“Are you behind this?” Sif had demanded.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Loki lied, playing coy for the sake of it. He knew well enough that there was no point in trying to fool Sif, not when she had always seen through it all. She grabbed his collar without restraint, one hand gripping the fabric and the other balled into a fist, poised to strike.

“I will give you one chance to tell me the truth, and one chance only, before I find the All-Father and make certain he has you locked up for treason.”

“Why bother coming to me, if you’re already so convinced of my guilt?”

“Because I want to hear it from you and see in your eyes whether your black heart knows remorse. Because I want to know _why_.”

Loki seemed to weigh the cost of each remark that sprouted in his mind, and forewent avoidance completely. “I wanted to keep him from that throne long enough for Father to realize what a mistake he’d made to think Thor should be king.”

“Has your jealousy gone so far?” Sif asked, recoiling in disgust. Loki readjusted his collar, his mouth a hard line. “You would lie and cheat and let good, loyal men die—all for the sake of taking the throne for yourself? These are the actions of a coward and a traitor, not a king.”

Loki scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You really are as thick-headed as my brother, aren’t you? I don’t want to be king.”

“And now Thor is banished for something you started,” Sif said, jabbing a finger towards him. “What you did to your brother—”

Loki moved her hand away. “Look me in the eye, Sif. Look me in the eye and tell me that you believed he was ready.”

She could not. _A lie shows in the eyes,_ Sif’s mother had always said. Loki made his eyes to be a shroud to falsehood, but Sif’s always told; he said this because she’d told him, once, and claimed to always see it in his eyes when he lied. When she glared at him and pressed her lips hard together, he nodded and gave her a self-satisfied smirk.

Thor was not ready. She hated to admit it, even if only by omission, as much as he was proud to hear it from her.

“You could learn a thing of two of lying.”

“From you?” Sif scoffed disdainfully. Loki shrugged and made to leave, but she stopped him, catching his collar again. When she spoke, her voice was low and deep with anger. “One day, Loki, you will tell the one great lie of your life, and they will sew your lips shut so that you can never tell a lie again. When that happens, not even my love of Thor will make me turn away from enjoying it.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! this was something that i started way back in 2012 when the avengers came out, put on ice for years, and recently revisited on a whim--about the first third of it was entirely rewritten, and everything after that is brand new--so i'm really proud to finally be getting it out there. please drop me a line and give me your impressions! if you're interested, you can check out bits of my process on my [tumblr](http://ronsenboobi.tumblr.com/tagged/thorsif%20fic%20progress/chrono), or just come chat with me about thor stuff ❤


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